Aufstand (The Mutiny)
At Birkenau-Auschwitz the mass extermination of Häftlings operated like clockwork and any perturbation seemed out of the question. In autumn 1944, the number of victims had abounds exceeded one million and the conveyor belt of the death mechanism did not know the slightest disturbance. The SS-men delighted in superintending its operation. The sight of thousands upon thousands of people crowded in the gas chambers, of the flames in the crematoria throwing light on the mountains of ashes elevated their feelings of''Übermenschen,'' supermen. The life of Übermenschen, of supermen, suited them to perfection: it ran smoothly in the tirade so dear to every SS-man: assassination -- canteen -- brothel. Still, there was but one source of anxiety. The possibility of seines Aufstand, of a revolt. Never throughout history, nowhere upon earth could dictators, tyrants completely shun off in the depth of their hearts the fear of rebellion. The SS-men in''Birkenau-Auschwitz'' made no exception. Therefore, they took into account all possible means, conditions, prerequisites that might have favored the mere idea of a rising and they eliminated them brutally and in cold blood. They knew that in order to fight one needed a weapon, as you cannot rebel with bare hands. So that in the camps of''Birkenau, those who survived the first great selections on the death platform were directly led to the "desinfestion post" wherefrom they came out stark naked to receive their 'Häftling' clothes. Nobody managed to take along into the camp a knife, a penknife or at least a blade. In camp E we did not work, so we used no tool, we laid our hands on no other object except the few tens of pans and dishes we ate from. On the platforms between the barracks there were not even stones. And then the 'SS'-men were well aware that in order to fight one needed to be physically strong. Due to the regime that had been imposed on us we were so worn out -- by hunger, by thirst, by diseases, by beatings, by tortures -- that we could hardly stand upon our feet. And besides, an uprising needs organization, and for that people should know and trust one another. The 'SS'-men severed the families, divided them so that no brother be together with his brother, no father be side by side his son; moreover, they divided even the compact groups of 'Häftlings' belonging to one and the same country. Transports of 'Häftlings' frequently leftBirkenau'' bound to the hundreds of camps in Germany while other deportees from all corners of Nazi occupied Europe kept pouring in. And yet, there was one exception, one detachment that could get hold of weapons, which was not physically fagged out, witch had plenty of food and water at its disposal and which, moreover, benefited by the advantage of stability, as they worked together all the time. It was the Sonderkommando, ''the special detachment servicing the gas chambers and the crematoria. The members of the detachment who also selected the deportee's goods and clothes, could lie their hands on knifes and penknife's, on scissors, tongs and hammers. Moving from one camp to another, getting into contact with the''Häftlings who worked in the Auschwitz ''factories or in the surrounding on '''they even had the possibility to get hold of explosive. The SS''-men knew it and with the regular and strict meticulousness proper to professional assassins, theSonderkommando,' the special detachment, was liquidated every four months. The new special detachment commenced its activity with assisting the burning of the former. To organize a rebellion in four months was difficult, in the conditionsBirkenau'' downright impossible. The gloomy prospects, the implacable end paralyzed the members of the detachment and drained there pawed of action. So that for years on end, they resigned themselves to their fate when their hour come, just like the endless rows of deportees submissively entering the gas chambers at their urge. Eleven special detachments of some 900-1.200 Häftlings shared the same fate one after the other. The members of the twelfth Sonderkommando decided not to let themselves killed and to avenge the countless children, old and diseased ad people, and mothers who'd had preceded them, to avenge the millions of people who entered the gas chambers fully convinced that they would merely have a shower. In early October 1944, four months after the twelfth special detachment was set up, the 860 Häftlings who were its members decided not to let themselves exterminated. They were ready to fight, to revolt. The signal was to be given by the group servicing crematory No.1 and the assault was to start concomitantly at all the four crematoria. Fighting the SS, ''the members of the special detachment would dare the devil: to break through the baded-wire fences, to repulse the ''SS-men and packs of wolf dogs and an escape to Vistula. The rebellion was planned to break out on the night of 6 to 7 October. But either the SS-men got wind of something, or they sensed a certain strain in the air, because on the 6th of October at noon they started liquidating the Sonderkommando, not the whole of it, but by groups. They began with those servicing crematory No. 3. Seventy SS-men suddenly jumped off lorries in the precincts of the crematory and ordered the members of the special detachment to take up their dressing for the Appell. But they all kept still, not moving from their places. It was for the first time in the history of the Birkenau camp that an order of an SS-man was broken. But the chief of the SS detachment, a killer with a long personal record and well up in the psychology of Häftlings did not lose his self-possession. He instantly decided to call them individually, after the numbers tattooed on their arms. And he began with the Hungarian deportees who had come into the camp barely a few months before and were less hardened, still fearing everything that happened around them. One by one the whole hundred of them took up their dressing and formed into lines. Surrounded by SS-men they were immediately taken and confined in a barrack in camp D. Then the Greek detainees were called out and they complied, more reluctantly, it is true, and in a bad order, but in the end they formed into columns. Thereafter, the first Polish detainee was called. Not a stir, only murmurs and clamor. The chief of the brutes had no time to give voice to his indignation as he was knocked down at once, together with other six SS-men by an incendiary bottle, which blew up at his feet. The SS-men opened fire. The'' Häftlings ''withdrew to the crematory and the fight began. The SS-men killed by storms of machine-gun fire the aligned Greek detainees and attempted to penetrate the crematory. The''Häftlings ''were fighting back vigorously when all of a sudden the building blew up. The sound of machine-gun rattle and of the explosion took those at crematory No.1 by surprise. They stopped working. The''SS''-men supervising the work at the ovens hit a Häftling with his riding whip and shouted at them to keep up the pace. He was instantly stabbed and thrown into one of the ovens. The SS-man at the other end of the hall who came running to aid his comrade shared the same fate. The next moment the SS battalions entered all crematoria. Three thousand SS-men armed with hand grenades, pistols, heavy machine-guns and accompanied by the never-failing wolf dogs surrounded the crematoria. And thus, failing to effect surprise, the main shock element -- the members of the Sonderkommando had nothing to hope for. And yet, they fought heroically and stubbornly, with an outstanding courage, which did not spring from the chance of victory but from the moving resolve of being the first to die in those crematoria defending their dignity. Only twelve of the rebels succeeded in escaping Birkenau, but they were soon caught and executed. Those who did not fall during combat were taken out of the camp and killed with flamethrowers. Out of the 860 Häftlings only seven escaped extermination, as they were indispensable to the activity carried out by Captain-'SS' Mengele. Among them, his forensic expert at the Birkenau crematoria, Dr. Nyiszli Miklos of Oradea whose memories we relied on the great extent in narrating the development of there revolts. Seventy SS-men were killed. Some maintain that a limited number of rebels (twenty-seven) would have managed to escape and survive. One thing is certain: the thirteenth and last Sonderkommando began its activity by burning the corpses of those who, at the light of the crematory flames, wrote down one of the most dramatic and heroic pages in the fight for defending human dignity.